


Dioscuri

by 8611



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Ancient Rome, Gen, Mythology - Freeform, Team Free Will
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 08:18:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1259383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/8611/pseuds/8611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Decanus and Samuhel Belgarum, they’d called themselves. Soldier's boys, they’d claimed. Castiel didn’t see youth in their eyes, though, he saw ages and ages of walking the earth, and he wondered. The whole camp had as well, they’d followed the two with whispers that they’d been born out of the mountains, or the heavens. Dioscuri, they were called by the cohort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dioscuri

**Author's Note:**

> This is an expanded version of [this](http://deepspacebison.tumblr.com/post/76916219279/fic-dioscuri).
> 
> If you're looking for historical accuracy: turn back now. I also took the myths I used as inspiration and ran with them a little (lot) bit. 
> 
> A note on something in here: the name Dean is actually, fun fact of the day, originally from the word decanus. So yeah, Dean’s name and title are basically the same word. Etymology!
> 
> And, if anyone’s curious, Dean’s contubernium is him, Sam, Ash, Jo, Charlie, Kevin, Benny, and Garth.

The three of them fall together, supernova bright as they scream for the earth. They scatter across a farmer’s field, dredging up long troughs of tilled land, wings around them like armor and graces screaming, holding their bodies together by heartstrings. 

They’re not the first of their siblings to do this, not by dozens, but the newness of the world still makes their bones ache as they stand together, rising from the broken ground as one. There is steam in the air, and when they look at one another they do so with human eyes that cannot quite contain the blue glow that is seeking to put them back together and, at the same time, destroy these new shells. 

“We shouldn’t stay here,” Anna says, and they are the first words she has ever said in her new life, and the first that the other two have heard. 

“She’s right,” Castiel says, voice impossibly rough, and Balthazar nods in the light from the stars. 

They were sent here for a reason, just like those who had fallen before them, and they know they have many miles to go on human feet before morning. In time, their wings will heal, but for now they have to walk. 

\---

Night has fallen by the time they wearily conclude their meeting. Castiel knows why they were sent here, knows what he has to do, but the fact remains that until they are given the order, they are no more than a human army fighting human battles. And everything right now is painfully human, painfully foolhardy, choices made out of pride and short-sightedness. 

The emperor is dead at the hands of his own troops. All of those plans were made behind closed doors that the malakim hadn't known of. Their numbers have been sliced open by the tribes raiding from the north, and they’re bleeding manpower and supplies. Castiel has lead more disastrous campaigns, but never when the playing pieces involved were human. 

He walks through camp with his eyes straight ahead, past rows of tents, some that glow lowly with the sway of a lantern somewhere inside their walls. There are groups of men clustered around anemic fires, doing their best to coax the flames out of water-logged kindling. The weather has not been kind to them. 

With a sigh he stops and rubs a palm across his face. When he opens his eyes he looks skyward. It’s been many long years since he’s fallen, and he knows at the back of his mind that to pray would do him no good. No one is listening anymore, and he knows they won’t listen in again until their plans come to pass on Earth. 

“Useless,” he murmurs. 

“What is?” 

Castiel turns to stare at the man who had spoken and finds a tight group of eight around a fire that seems to burn with the brightness that only comes from dry wood. A few of them have swiveled to look at him, but most of them seem perfectly happy to bend low over the flames and ignore him, talking in hushed tones. 

He knows who they are, this small band of eight circled up at the very edge of camp. The whole cohort knows them. He does not doubt that there are people in Rome who know of this one single little contubernium. There are always whispers about them -- hunters and warriors, demons and witches. VIII, the camp calls them. 

The one who had spoken is their decanus. He’s watching Castiel with those wide eyes of his, honesty and curiosity. It’s been a long time since Castiel has believed the light in the man’s eyes -- he’s seen him in battle, seen him with his contubernium. He’s a trickster with too sharp a mind and deadly hands. 

“Nothing,” Castiel answers, and he knows he’s being watched as he walks off, back to the beating heart of the center of the camp. 

\---

Eight was once two. The decanus and his brother had ridden into camp one morning when they were wedged far up in the mountains, on the shores of a lake. The weather had been making a turn for the worse, and they knew the road to the north was impassable. 

And yet, these two had come through it, wrapped in dark cloaks and wearing plain, battle scarred leathers. They’d come with a message for Anna directly from Raphael, just a simple little thing that said that these two men should be allowed to assemble their own team and fight. 

Decanus and Samuhel Belgarum, they’d called themselves. Soldier's boys, they’d claimed. Castiel didn’t see youth in their eyes, though, he saw ages and ages of walking the earth, and he wondered. The whole camp had as well, they’d followed the two with whispers that they’d been born out of the mountains, or the heavens. Dioscuri, they were called by the cohort. 

(The only thing that could have marked them as twins were their swamp-water eyes, the same color and lit from within by the same shattered stars.)

Anna granted them their contubernium. It took them a full year to round it out, starting with two from camp, a weapons expert that had always worried Castiel a bit, too smart by half, and a young woman with wheat colored hair and a beast in her heart. The last four came to camp, came when Dean and Sam called for them. A shadow of a man who could be anyone he wanted to be, a flame-haired tactician for Dean to work with, a bruiser with a too-sharp smirk set on a blood-red mouth, and a boy who spoke for them all, chin tilted up in defiance of the world. 

They all stood out like they were pillars of sunlight, too bright and too strange. None of them particularly looked like soldiers, and yet Castiel was more than sure that they were all warriors. They were cut from the same cloth, something worn but impossibly strong. 

The whispers got worse, but they took the hisses of _Eight_ as a badge of honor. Sam and Dean inked the numbers into their skin, over their hearts, and smirked when anyone dared sneer _Eight_ to their faces. Castiel knew it was mostly out of fear. Eight slipped off into the dark too often to be a normal contubernium, and the cohort knew it. 

“You’re not meant to control them, are you?” Balthazar asks one night, and Castiel shakes his head. “Anna’s given you a rabid wolf with eight heads.”

“Not rabid,” Castiel says. They’re much too calculated to be rabid, although Castiel knows that there is a wolf in every one of them. 

\---

Castiel likes to be up with the sun. He does not need to sleep, not technically, but he’s walked as a human long enough that a few hours a night have become habit. 

The camp is almost deserted as he walks through it. There hasn’t been a raid in coming on a month, and they’ve started relaxing. Castiel doesn’t like it, it’s the calm before the storm, but he knows all of the malakim in camp are having problems controlling their human charges. There are so many claimants to the title of emperor that it seems less and less men want to fight for them every day, least of all in a fruitless war with the tribes from the north. 

When he gets to the tree line of the forest they’re camped up against he stops, just listening for a moment. At first all he hears is the creak of heavy boughs and the rustle of leaves in the wind, but then he picks out two voices, low and rocking. 

Sam and Dean are sitting together on a fallen log not far into the trees, stripped to their base layers and barefoot. Even in the simple garments Castiel doesn’t doubt they’ve both got multiple knives hidden away. He’s never seen the two anything less than over armed. 

“Centurion,” Dean greats, nodding to him. Sam turns, looking at him from under his bangs. 

“You shouldn’t be outside of camp,” Castiel says, mostly out of reflex. He knows that these are not two unruly foot soldiers who have wandered away. Dean grins at him, something sharp and cutting. 

“We’ll be alright,” Dean says. Castiel knows it. 

“Did you need something?” Sam asks, dark gaze unwavering, and Castiel holds it, because he’s never shied away from staring down humans. 

“Just walking,” Castiel says, and continues on his way. 

As he walks away he hears Dean murmur something and Sam snort out a laugh in reply. The words sound foreign and heavy to Castiel’s ears, and for a moment he’s thrown before he realizes that the words are Graecus. It’s spoken like verse from the curling pages of a scroll, old and heavy and long since used. 

_Don’t antagonize the malak, Sammy._

Castiel can feel his pulse tick up as he keeps his back to them. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that they know he’s not human -- their contubernium wouldn’t be particularly effective if they couldn’t divine the mythic from the average -- but he doesn’t know how they’ve found out he’s one of the malakim. 

He stops to watch the sun rise through the trees and thinks of Sam and Dean instead of the sky. 

\---

There are three of Eight on watch when he walks the perimeter of the camp. It’s a bright night, lit by a full moon that bleaches out the green of the grass and the red of the soldiers' tunics. 

Sam and Dean stand with the smallest of their group, Kevin. Castiel has seen him fight only once, and it had put any doubts about his capacity as a soldier to rest summarily. He’d moved like he had been able to fly, so quickly and sharply it was hard to keep an eye on him. He’d been fighting a mountain of a man, the kind of hulk that anyone at camp would pray to best, and he’d been able to take him down without ever being hit himself. Argicida, Castiel had heard him called after that.

“Enjoying the evening?” Dean asks when Castiel comes to them, lazily leaning against a low fence post. 

“It’s been pleasant,” Castiel says, and Dean cracks a grin at that. Castiel has noticed little things about the brothers, and Dean’s willingness to bear his teeth, even if he hides it in a smile, is one of them. 

“We’ll probably need to leave soon,” Kevin tells him, and when Castiel raises his eyebrows at him he continues. “Benny’s off scouting. We head there are lamiae in these hills.” 

“Just find someone to cover your place,” Castiel tells them.

“Always will,” Sam says. 

Castiel hears them leave later, when he’s in his own tent. No one else would dare take horses out now, in the strange hours between midnight and daybreak. When he slips outside he watches as three riders on dark horses vanish off into the night, over the swell of a grassy hill. He knows that two of them are Sam and Dean -- they’ll never leave the other behind -- and figures the other one is Benny, with his wide shoulders and barrel chest. 

If they were any other soldiers they’d be ridden down and brought under heel. Instead, Castiel looks after them until he can’t see them anymore, and knows that they’ll be back by morning. 

\---

Castiel isn’t sure what possessed him to lead Sam and Dean back to his own tent, but he supposes it is the easy knowledge that they know what he is. They’d come back muddy, beaten, and bloody after tracking a harpeia for a long week. It had evidently turned out to be a nest, and Castiel had met them at back of the column as they’d swept out of the trees, riding by their sides through the late afternoon. 

They’re sitting on the floor of his tent now, leaning against a table with their shoulders pressed together. Dean’s eyes have slipped closed and Sam has a hand on Dean’s knee, anchoring them together. 

“May I?” Castiel asks, holding up his hands, and Sam looks at him for a long moment before he nods. 

Dean had taken the brunt of it, and Castiel can tell by the pallor of his skin that he’s lost too much blood. He’s honestly shocked that the two, especially Dean, were able to ride back to the cohort and then make it through to the evening, but here they are before him, still breathing. 

He holds Dean’s face between broad palms and pushes at the hurt in his body, diffusing it and knitting back together what has been broken. It surprises Castiel to see just how much is broken, the way he’s come back shattered. 

“He’s so reckless,” Sam says, voice low, and when Castiel looks at him, he’s staring at Dean so intently that it makes Castiel suck in a breath. There is anger and devotion in his eyes, burning and fever-bright. 

Instead Castiel just pulls away to press two fingers to Sam's forehead, easily banishing the fringes of pain that are still clinging to him. Sam’s eyes flutter shut and he sighs, slumping a bit more into Dean’s shoulder. 

“You two seem to think you’re made of iron,” Castiel chides, and Sam grins lazily. 

“Steel,” Dean corrects, and when Castiel turns to him his eyes have opened, although they’re lidded and heavy. “Too stubborn for iron.” 

Sam opens his eyes and shakes his head, stuttering out a laugh, and Castiel cannot help but grin in response as well. 

Later, when they’re asleep and Castiel can watch over them as he works in the light of a candle at his desk, he thinks that Dean was right. There is nothing malleable about these two -- they are hard lines of solid strength. 

\---

He wakes to the feeling of two bodies pressed against his sides, all of them tangled together on a couch in Anna’s tent. When he opens his eyes it’s to the first warmth of the sun spilling across the canvas walls, one of his hands in Anna’s hair and the other pressed against Balthazar’s shoulder. Balthazar is still asleep, breathing quiet and light, but he’s aware Anna’s awake from the way her body is stiff, the soft lines of sleep flushed from her skin. 

“I don’t like this,” Anna murmurs. Outside, Castiel can hear the first sounds of the morning -- foot falls, low voices, clanging metal -- and her voice seems to cut through it all. 

“They’re orders,” Castiel replies. 

They’d sat up late into the rough hours of a long morning, listening as Raphael told them what was to be done. He had come earlier in the evening with news of a broken seal, the very first, and they knew what had to be done. 

Castiel had sensed Anna and Balthazar’s unwillingness and unease early on. He knows that all three of them had to have doubts to fall in the first place, but he still fell with a purpose: await these orders, and follow them. 

“We don’t have to follow every order we’re given,” Anna says, leaning away from Castiel and stretching out her arms. Her shoulders and elbows crack with the movement, and Castiel weaves his fingers further into her hair at the sound, something so human about it that it makes him frown. 

“Following orders is what we do,” Castiel says as she stands up, crossing to the low table opposite them and sweeping maps out of the way so that she can sit down, her legs and arms crossed. She stares as Castiel with the fury of a wide open sky that speaks of a summer storm. 

“So you’re willing to blindly give up two humans who I _know_ you’ve grown to care about?” Anna asks. “Give up half of this world? Send the men you command into a battle that isn’t theirs to fight?”

“It’s what is written,” Castiel says, a bit too loudly, and Balthazar stirs against his side. 

“Are we arguing about what to do?” Balthazar asks, blinking in the hazy sunlight. “Because I, for one, am in no hurry to get moving on the apocalypse. I quite like this place.” 

“This place?” Castiel asks. “It’s a depleted cohort without direction or heading. We have no emperor and no orders from any human source. We're cut off from the legion. It’s blood and dirt and broken men.” 

“I think you sell them short,” Balthazar says. “And besides, what’s so wrong with that? How is that any different than most of our lives?”

Castiel knows it’s true. They were raised as soldiers, lived as soldiers, and would die as soldiers as well. Wandering around in the northern provinces with the occasional attack from the Gauls is not substantially different from what they did when they fought as part of the Host, as twisted and hierarchical as it was. 

“Don’t do this, Castiel,” Anna says, and when he looks at her he sees the light of the heavens under her skin. 

\---

The orders are to take Sam and Dean to a villa in the mountains, and await further direction there. It has been sitting more and more uneasily with Castiel as the day has worn on, and he knows he was meant to leave this morning, but instead night is closing in on them and he hasn’t made any move to leave with the brothers. 

He goes to them as the last dregs of light are slipping from the sky. They’re sitting with the rest of Eight, laughing about something, and the fire they’re circled around seems to almost dance with the sound, sparks leaping into the cool, open air. 

“Centurion,” Dean says, grinning at him, and Castiel tips his head towards their tent. Dean’s grin drops instantly, and he and Sam get up together, following him inside. 

“I have orders,” Castiel tells them. “I’m to take you and as many as your contubernium as you see fit into the mountains. I haven’t received any instruction past that.” 

“Do you know why?” Sam asks. 

“I… do,” Castiel hedges. 

“But you can’t tell us,” Dean says. 

Castiel nods, and Sam and Dean exchange a look that Castiel can’t read. It’s in moments like this, when the two of them are wholly their own, unknown and unread by everyone around them, that Castiel thinks of the whispers that follow them. They’ve never mentioned family, expect for that first day to say that they were a soldier’s sons, never mentioned where they’re from, or where they might go one day. The live here, in this moment, together, the two horsemen, the two hunters, who came out of the mist in the mountains armed and grown, as if Minerva split in two. Boys with no childhood, dioscuri with no fathers.

“We’ll go,” Dean says, and Castiel wonders if what he’s feeling is heartbreak. They’d agreed so easily, a simple two words, so unlike the anger and refusal that Castiel had expected. 

“We leave tomorrow at first light,” Castiel says, and knows that he’s feeling doubt. 

\---

They leave half of Eight behind, choosing instead to only bring two others. Castiel finds it odd that the brothers would be so trusting to ride out with only themselves and two others -- Charlie and Jo, the two the cohort calls wild girls. As he rides with them in the early morning mist though, they don’t seem wild or young. They’re both women grown, and Jo is calm and quiet and Charlie is bright and full of smiles. They both seem incredibly normal and human, something that Castiel forgets about Eight sometimes. It’s easy to view Sam and Dean as something else, something preternatural, only tied to themselves, but the whole contubernium is still made of flesh and blood and humanity. 

The first two days are easy things, the terrain simple to cross and the weather holding. Castiel foolishly wants to believe it’s because he prayed for the sun over their heads and the breeze at their backs, but he knows now that so much of that is chance. It has been long eons since his Father has listened or answered. 

On the third day the terrain bunches up under the ground as the temperature drops, and they wind their way into the hills, through vineyards and across dusty roads. The sky is overcast, and there is a charge in the air, wearing on them all. 

“It’ll be dark soon,” Sam calls from the back of their little column as Dean reappears over the crest of a hill, his mount pawing at the ground. Castiel has noticed that the horse shies away from being stationary, always needing to move.

“We can make it into the next valley,” Dean yells back, a hand cupped around his mouth. “Find somewhere to stay.”

It’s as they’re traversing the flat of the valley that the shapes curl out of the ground, dark smoke with bright red coals for eyes.

Castiel has slipped his thin, silver blade from the inside of his arm in the space of a heartbeat, even as his horse jumps to the side under him, trying to twist away from the monsters that move like mist.

He takes the nearest one, the blade pulling at the smoke as he goes by, solid in a way that always seems strange. The demon crows in pain before it spills to the ground as starspecs of bright light, scattering across the dirt and grass. He looks up to find another one and sees Dean charging towards it, bow raised. He says something that Castiel cannot hear, can only see his lips move, and then the arrow he has nocked bursts into flame.

When he lets it fly it shoots like a star, slamming into one of the swirling creatures. It falls to the ground in a million pinpoints of light, and Dean and Sam pass close together, so close, so fast, that Castiel almost has an order ready to shout, to watch their flanks.

Instead they brush by each other and Sam grabs a long knife from Dean’s belt in the one single space where they pass, both of them clearly more than aware where one ends and the other begins. They move like they know what the other will do before it actually comes to pass.

Sam draws his own knife, a mirror of the one he took from his brother, and rides down two more of the creatures, easily separating their heads from their bodies.

Jo and Charlie dispatch the last two in a similar fashion, and the five of them circle up together, watching through the twilight-dark air for any other sign of demons, twisting smoke with those red coal eyes, but see nothing.

He looks to Sam and Dean, and finds them staring at each other, another one of their unreadable looks, and when they look to Castiel as one, their eyes are dark. 

\---

They find a dark, empty outbuilding on the edge of a vineyard and make it their own for a night. Castiel sits in the long grass against the cool stone wall and stares skyward, but receives nothing in answer.

“Now is not the time to be silent,” he hisses out, but it does little good, and he sighs, letting his head drop. He should just give up, accept the fact that no one is listening to him.

“Who are you talking to?”

He looks up to find Dean staring down at him, the stars spread out behind his head.

“No one who’s listening,” he says, and Dean slides down the rough stone wall to sit next to him. “Where’s Sam?” 

“Asleep,” Dean says. “He doesn’t get enough of it.” 

Castiel has seen the two of them sleep once and thought the same thing, considering they had dropped off for just a few hours before rolling awake. They both seem to be trained into patterns of sleep being a danger they can’t afford. 

“What happened today wasn’t… normal,” Castiel says, and even as he says it the word seems strange. Demons are never normal, but even for their reality, the one that occupies the fringes between this world and the next, a whole group of them seems strange. 

“No,” Dean says. “Something’s coming. Sam and I have been feeling it for a few days.” 

“We shouldn’t go,” Castiel says after a quiet moment, and Dean turns to look at him. “I… I know this won’t end well.”

“We’ll take care of it,” Dean says. 

“You don’t know what we’re going towards,” Castiel says. 

“We rarely do,” Dean says. “That hasn’t stopped us yet.” 

“We should turn back,” Castiel says. 

Dean shakes his head and knits his fingers behind it, tipping his face up to stare at the sky. 

“We keep going forward,” Dean says, conviction and steel, and there is the ghost of a smile on his lips. 

\---

They stop on the shore of a lake in the mountains on the fourth day. Across the narrow lake is a villa tucked into the slopes, stately but sitting alone. 

They take a ferry across the water. The lake is almost perfectly still, only broken by the trail from the boat, and when they land on the rocky shore Dean and Sam jump down first, water washing around their legs. Castiel’s not sure what they’re looking for, but Dean nods to Jo after a moment and she and Charlie climb down, Castiel coming last after flipping a coin to the ferryman. 

The villa has a wide lawn and low steps, and when they all clatter into the reception hall their footsteps echo around in the quiet.

Castiel leaves them there and a servant directs him to the lush garden in the back. He stands by a pool with a mosaic of, amusing enoughly, Castor and Pollux decorating the bottom of it. It’s warped and distorted by the water, and Castiel looks over his shoulder without putting much thought into it, even though he can’t see Sam and Dean.

A balding man appears around one of the pillars, and although his body suggests years of wear and age, he walks with confidence and long strides.

“Zachariah,” Castiel realizes as the man comes to a stop in front of him.

“Welcome, Castiel,” Zachariah says, and although he’s smiling, his eyes remain cold. “I see you followed orders and brought me the Belgarum siblings.”

“I was told you would have further orders for them,” Castiel says. 

“You know who they are, correct?” Zachariah asks, and Castiel nods. True vessels, both of them, for Michael and Lucifer. The knowledge has been eating at him since he received it, more and more with each passing day, and he wishes he had shared it with Dean last night. 

“They’re just boys,” Castiel says, even though he doesn’t believe it. 

“But soon they’ll be more,” Zachariah says, and his smile is twisted. 

“Let me talk to them,” Castiel says, spreads his hands out in front of him, offering up bare palms. 

Zachariah considers his hands for a moment before giving him a simple nod, and Castiel lets out a long breath. 

\---

He finds Dean and Sam skipping rocks out onto the lake, standing on the shore. The sun is working its way through the clouds and casting broken shadows across the mountains and the water. Jo and Charlie watch him cross the lawn from their place on the wide front steps, and he is struck by how much their gaze feels like Sam and Dean’s does against his back. 

“What’s the malak want?” Dean asks as Castiel stands next to them, not looking away from where he’s just throw another rock. It skips three times, and Dean grins, feral and sharp.

“He… are you familiar with the concept of the Christian apocalypse?” Castiel asks, and doesn’t miss the way that Dean and Sam share a look, something dark and calculating.

“We are,” Sam answers for both of them.

“The Host believes that it is upon us. And that you… well, that the people who will lead the armies will use your bodies on Earth,” Castiel says.

“Michael and Lucifer,” Sam says, and Dean snorts out a dry laugh.

“Zachariah is looking for boys who have been dead for a century,” Dean says.

Castiel startles at that, he can’t help it.

“Decanus and Samuhel Belgarum,” Sam says, skipping another rock, “died in a fire while their father was at war with the Marcomanni. They were not quite a year and barely five. Their father was killed in battle, and their line died with him. We came across the farm the day after and took on their names to honor them.”

“Then who are you?” Castiel breathes, and Dean turns to Sam, his head cocked to one side. They share a look before Dean whistles, high and strong, and Charlie and Jo turn to them as one, eyes bright in the half-dark.

For a moment the only movement is the breeze and the small waves on the shore, and then Jo nods, and Dean grins, wide and blinding.

Castiel has seen malakim unfurl bits and pieces of their true forms on earth before, energy too big for human bodies to hold, their eyes glowing and wings unfurled as shadows on the wall. What happens to Sam and Dean is something like that, and yet, all at once different.

The dirt and weary eyes from the road are gone, and their movements are just a bit too fluid to be human as they stand to face Castiel shoulder to shoulder, heads tipped slightly towards each other. Their armor has changed as well, the sleek plates and rough tunics gone in favor of something more grand and fitted that does not hide their bulk. There are round shields on their backs and spears in their hands and the light of the stars in their eyes.

Just like Castiel knows his own story, the one that started so long ago, he suddenly knows the story of the two men standing in front of him. He knows of their time as sailors, as hunters, as princes. Knows of their sisters, sitting on the steps with the shine of the coming moon in their hair, knows of their fathers, one long dead and one who will never see death, and knows of the worlds they have walked.

“Dioscuri,” Castiel says, voice low and quiet. 

“All whispers hold a truth, malak,” Dean says, his voice finally showing years of use of wear, deep and rough.

There is no doubt in Castiel’s heart after that.

\---

“You’re never going to get tired of this, are you?” Sam asks, pegging a thing of Doritos at Dean’s head. He catches them without looking, grinning at something on his phone instead.

“Nope,” Dean says, slipping off the hood and looking up at Sam. “You wanna drive?”

Sam grabs the keys from Dean as they switch sides, enjoying the rumble of the car under him as it springs to life.

They drive in silence for miles, just the radio on between them and Dean’s feet kicked up on the dash. He’s the only one who’s allowed to do that, Sam tried it once and got bitched at in several different languages.

“Are you?” Dean says, when they’re in the middle of nowhere, just them, a semi and a minivan on the long stretch of highway. There are pines standing tall on either side of the narrow blacktop, and it reminds Dean of a modern Via Appia, or as close as something in America can get.

“Am I what?” Sam asks, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel.

“Getting tired of this,” Dean says, gesturing vaguely around them. “Driving around, hunting shit.”

“Nah,” Sam says, and he grins at Dean out of the corner of his eye. “Why would I ever get tired of it?”

“Good,” Dean says, and slouches a bit further down in his seat with a small smile.

Something, they’re not sure what, compels them to stop off by a scenic overlook as the sun is setting. They park and tumble out of the car, all long stiff limbs and car ride tired. The walk through the woods is nice, and Dean stretches, popping out his spine and making Sam roll his eyes.

The overlook is stunning, sitting on the edge of a cliff that falls straight down into a pine forest. They lean on the railing, shoulders touching, and feel the change in the air at the exact same time. They turn together, and find a man in a trench coat standing a few feet away.

“Angel,” Dean greets with a wide smile.

“Gemini,” Cas returns, mostly out of habit. They’ve been doing this for a while now.

“Haven’t seen you in a long time,” Sam says, grinning, and Cas joins them at the railing.

“There was a civil war in Heaven,” Cas says with a shrug, and Dean and Sam laugh at his nonchalance.

“Bummer,” Dean says, smiling at Sam, making Sam laugh again. Cas gives them one of his little looks, because after thousands of years he’s still trying to puzzle out exactly how they work together. Dean is pretty sure he’ll never figure it out, but good on him for making the effort.

They stay to watch the sun slip all the way behind the horizon and then hike back to the car, all of them more than surefooted enough to get through the forest in the dark.

“You staying for a bit?” Sam asks, and Cas stands by the car for a moment before nodding and slipping into the back seat as Sam and Dean get in the front.

The dark road welcomes them back, and they drive off between the tall pines.


End file.
